So, I hope the good homeowners of Anaheim and Orange are ready for this: Monday is when the County starts clearing out all the homeless folks who’ve been camping peacefully on the riverbed, some for a decade or longer. The pathologically lying County claims that’s a little under 500 people, but I trust my friends and colleagues of the People’s Homeless Task Force who regularly spend time there, and estimate more than 1000, possibly as many as 1500.

Not to worry, says Supervisor Todd Spitzer, perpetually campaigning on the John & Ken radio show, there are shelter beds for these folks to go to. He certainly knows he’s lying: there are at most 195 beds available, all of them with strict restrictions difficult or impossible for most people to comply with, and only about 50 that don’t kick you out every morning. (Hence some wags’ suggestion of a “Camp Spitzer” up near Todd’s Orange Hills home.)

At least Todd’s colleague Shawn Nelson admits that the vast majority of these people – men, women, children; drunk, sober and drugged; addled and level-headed – will be coming back out onto the streets of Anaheim and Orange, where most of them originally came from until they were drawn to the riverbed’s relative lack of harassment. But wait, don’t give judicial Congressional candidate Nelson too much credit for honesty – he’s the same guy who claimed that last year’s homeless eviction was forced on the county by FEMA’s passion for “rip-rap” on the banks, until an e-mail showed him to be a liar who was mainly reacting to complaints from neighboring Honda Center. (The supervisorial reaction to this embarrassment? They made it legal for themselves to erase their own e-mails discussing such matters. We REALLY need to drain this Supervisorial swamp in 2018-20.)

Just so, the county’s phony pretext for THIS newest chapter of Homeless Wack-a-Mole is necessary maintenance on the flood channel. Bullshit of course. Government just takes turns responding to the bitching of the most vocal and moneyed of their voters, most of whom experience severe discomfort with the constant visual and aromatic reminder that the economic system which is working so well for THEM is NOT working for everybody.

But this week’s coming event is serious on a big and tragic level – this is the biggest displacement of “distasteful” people yet in this County. Many of them already constitutionally stressed-out are starting to become hysterical over this. SOME OF THEM HAVE BEEN ON THE RIVERBED, bothering nobody, FOR OVER A DECADE. And the skill set, and set of things you need, for living on the streets instead of a settled campground, is much different. Friends of mine are hustling to get them carts, blankets, more portable necessities. The APD’s homeless “liaison team” will have its work cut out for it, once again seizing belongings and handing out tickets that’ll never be paid. And sadly, support networks developed on the riverbed are going to be disrupted, as Nick Gerda writes in a fine Voice of OC report:

Mora, the homeless woman who said she was born and raised in Anaheim, said she “grew a family” at the riverbed camp, and that it will be difficult to keep those connections after people have to relocate. People at the camp provided moral support for each other, she said.

The coming debacle, at which many of us will be present, witnessing and seeing what we can do to help, puts me in mind of the final song of “Fiddler on the Roof,” where the 19th-century Russian government, responding to yet another wave of Cossack anti-semitism in their constituency, evicts the entire population of the Jewish hamlet of Anatevka, where they’ve been for generations. Just as on the riverbed this coming week, there is nowhere for Tevye and friends to go … but hey! at least the government is kind enough to give them some time to pack up their things, whatever they can take with them!

About Vern Nelson

Greatest pianist in Orange County, and official troubador of both Anaheim and Huntington Beach (the two ends of the Santa Ana Aquifer.) Performs regularly both solo, and with his savage-jazz quintet The Vern Nelson Problem. Reach at vernpnelson@gmail.com, or 714-235-VERN.

This is how some neighbors in my area are getting ready, courtesy NextDoor :

” Kxxxx, this is great to hear all the hard work is finally paying off.”

” …..I want to know what the plans are for chasing these sketchy people out of the parks when the riverbed is cleared? Very desparate people on the move is going to bring drama.”

” Gxxxx. ( response from Kxxxx)

You and I are neighbors and it’s going to take all of us, to keep an eye on things and keep our neighborhood and our parks safe. If we even see one tent go up at the park, we have to be on the phone immediately with our PD and then our district 5 councilman, Steve Faessel. We can’t let one tent turn into two, because we all know what happens next if we do that.

Also, we all have to watch our neighborhood. On my my street, there a few neighbors who I’m close with and between the four of us, we watch our street like hawks. We know who lives here and who doesn’t and we are willing to approach people that don’t belong here and when enough neighbors in our tract are willing to step up and do this, it quickly sends a “we are watching/not in our neighborhood” message. Lately, a few of us have also got into the practice of driving around the neighborhood for a bit, before heading home from some place, especially at night. Doing this only delays me by a minute a or two, but I feel good knowing I went down some of the streets in my tract that I normally don’t go down, in order to make sure things are quite and looking like they are suppose to .

I also agree with Sxx, about what the response will be like from our Anaheim PD. I think that deep down they are tired of this situation, just like many of us are. For a long time, there was this sort of “hands off” mentality because the riverbed situation was a jurisdictional mess in terms of enforcement. Now that this is being dealt with, I suspect the attitude of our PD will change as well.

Personally, I’m also going to start watching St. College more than ever once the riverbed is clear. We’ve heard at city hall meetings, some of the negative things that have taken place when homeless congregate there, and I’d like to see us start getting that cleaned up as well. Steve Faessel also supports this idea, so that’s also a big plus.”

ANAHEIM, Calif. (Jan. 18, 2018) — Anaheim is ready for the pending clearing of the Santa Ana River Trail with extra help for those living in homelessness as well as additional resources for residents, businesses and neighborhoods concerned about the winding down of encampments.

As Anaheim has done since 2014, we will continue providing weekly homeless outreach services with City Net and the Anaheim Homeless Collaborative, a collection of more than 100 groups working together to address homelessness.

Since 2014, Anaheim and City Net have helped transition nearly 900 people out of homelessness.

As the county of Orange works to clear the river trail in coming weeks, the Anaheim Police Department’s homeless outreach and community policing teams will step up their outreach across the city to offer help and services to those who are homeless as well as ensure residents and businesses are safe.

Plans to address the county’s initial clearing of the river trail on Jan. 22 include:

Adding new security patrols at city parks and other public spaces seven days a week during peak hours and in the evening and overnight

Increasing City Net outreach and offering resources, including hotel vouchers and travel expenses for family reunification

Working with City Net to connect with those along the river trail and continuing to offer them assistance as they leave the area

Continuing to work with the county of Orange to offer housing and mental health resources for those in need

Standing ready to help residents and businesses that encounter issues and enhancing ways in which the community can relay issues to the city

Ensuring that everyone continues to feel safe and welcome in our parks, libraries and other public spaces

Residents and business owners needing assistance can submit a request through Anaheim Anytime, at Anaheim.net/AnaheimAnytime, and will receive a quick response.

Those who would like to help, donate or get involved in addressing homelessness can call City Net at (714) 451-6198.

Anyone who needs homeless services can also call City Net for help.

For more information on what we’re doing to address homelessness, visit Anaheim.net/homeless.”

*News report from CBS two nights ago: “LA has 25,000 Homeless”….How many do
“the Greater OC” have? Anywhere from 1500 to 18,000……..but then we would need
a Dept. of Commerce Census Evaluation to determine the real numbers…..eh? How about the Rehab homes? How many of those in Anaheim, Orange, Brea, Fullerton, Tustin and Yorba Linda? The Santa Ana River is long and runs from the seepage pools in the Northeast to the sea….

If “we” is us advocates (although I was mostly addressing the public) then yeah we were plenty ready.

The authorities are moving slowly and as gently as they know how. They started down at Chapman, probably because we activists had the most presence up on Katella (near our “Camp Hope”)

But we did have Lou Noble and Ricardo Toro reporting down at Chapman. Todd “Armed and Unhinged” Spitzer was there babbling at cameras. Sheriffs began to give residents notice that they were going to have to leave, possibly not today, but they had to start showing progress getting their shit together to move.

The authorities are trying to wear us all down. And there is still nowhere for the campers to go.

But more interesting was a group who used the example of internment camps as an opposing model. Now, before people go all bat-shit on this idea, there are some incredible similarities, opportunities and examples to be learned from places like Heart Mountain, Manzanar and Topaz, which was turned the lives of THOUSANDS around (thanks to the LDS Church and Lowell Sherratt Sr).

Further, the civilian assembly centers were extremely efficient at “triaging” internee’s, not dissimilar to what would be required to address this crisis. To be sure, the Japanese Americans did not suffer from the mental illness, addiction and unwillingness to work that the current homeless population employs, there is evidence that this model could be the basis for change.

CONSIDER: The reconciliation of the Japanese occored less than 3 years!!

If you are interested in SOLVING this problem, you should listen to these folks.